


river-clay, chalk, and silt

by screechfox



Category: The Silt Verses (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV First Person, Prayer, Religious Fanaticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28936275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: Musings on prayer, from the mouth of Brother Faulkner.
Relationships: Carpenter (The SIlt Verses) & Faulkner (The Silt Verses), Faulkner (The Silt Verses) & The Trawlerman (The Silt Verses)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	river-clay, chalk, and silt

**Author's Note:**

> so, i genuinely wasn't _planning_ to get fannish about the silt verses, for all i adore it, but then [beneath the heavy current](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920465) was posted and apparently that activated the "you **will** write fanfiction about this" sections of my brain. and then i wrote nearly all of this in six hours.

When I came to the church, one of the brothers gave me a necklace of prayer-marks. The beads were sculpted from river-clay dredged from the White Gull river, or so he told me, so even the most distant disciples could know some part of our god’s great shifting.

Used to be, I’d spend hours with those beads clutched between my fingers. I didn’t know the Silt Verses back then, so I suppose it was the closest I could get to true prayer. I held your symbols white-knuckle against my skin, and the lines would imprint on my palm. I’d always rejoice in that small transformation gifted by your signs — even though it always faded within an hour or two. 

Now I’m more studied in our faith, it seems a little sacrilegious.

I mean, forcing the ever-moving sediment still and unchanging, just so you can feel better about your own faith? It doesn’t seem the Trawlerman’s way, is all — everything must be allowed to transform. If someone can’t know your wonder when there’s no water for miles, my Trawlerman, can they even count themselves among your faithful?

I left that necklace behind when Sister Carpenter and I began our pilgrimage. 

To tell the truth, I probably would have brought it with me if I could. I might find it blasphemous now, but it was still a comfort to me when I was finding my feet in your church. Maybe I’d have thrown it to the river for you to reclaim, so the clay could finally return to your churning depths.

Carpenter wouldn’t approve of that — not that she approves of all that much, does she?

“If it washes up, it could be traced,” she’d tell me. Maybe she’d grab it from the water and shove it into her pocket, rescuing it from my _recklessness._

She’d have been right, of course; that’s why I didn’t bring it.

I couldn’t wear it, not out here where the fishermen spit into the water. Carpenter brought a few necklaces with her, quiet signals of false faiths, but my prayer necklace isn’t so subtle as all that. The marks hang at equal intervals around the chain, thin swooping lines that evoke the river’s curves even to someone who’s never set eyes on it. 

They’d take me for one of the Trawlerman’s faithful as soon as they saw me wear it, and I’m not in any hurry to get myself locked up. I only just got here, after all.

I left the necklace under my bed for some other fresh devotee to find — so the tide recedes and returns — and I brought the chalkboard instead.

The chalkboard is the safest way to pray, while we’re on the road. Less disrespectful, too, in my opinion; those white marks wash away like silt beneath the river. Chalk isn’t mined from the water, of course, but I like to think that any kind of sediment pleases you a little, my Trawlerman.

You can see the White Gull from my window, if you angle yourself _just_ right. Every morning and every evening, I look out at the water as I draw your marks and whisper your prayers. I imagine the waters rising to flood this town, to drown the dirty motel where I sit and call you.

The routine of invocation is a comfort, just like those worn clay beads.

I never hear Carpenter praying in the room next to mine, but that’s not exactly a surprise. She’s so unused to relying on her faith, I feel almost sorry for her. She’s so… self-sufficient. If she writes prayer-marks anywhere, she doesn’t let me see.

"Do false faiths use chalkboards?" I asked her as we drove towards the river — another one of my honest questions offered up for her to scoff at, even as the answer escaped her teeth with biting reluctance. And, predictable as the tide, she scoffed and she answered.

"Some of them. It's cheaper than paper if you pray a lot, and if you're worshiping _unlawfully,_ it's harder to trace." She’d sighed, her eyes firmly on the road.

“Do you think it _means_ anything to any of them?”

Carpenter glanced at me when I asked that, letting out a hard breath of annoyance.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the chalk speaks to the Trawlerman because it washes away, right? Do our enemies think the chalk invokes their gods too, or is it just convenience?”

Carpenter’s frown intensified as she sent another look my way. I ducked my head, the perfect picture of youthful embarrassment, and listened to her sigh again, begrudging.

“It might do, for some. The Scrivener is said to rejoice in impermanent knowledge, so maybe that goes for her prayers, too.” She listed a few other gods, names I’d heard in whispers in our hallowed halls, and then she shook her head. “Don’t think too hard on it, Brother Faulkner. We’re all of us just making do with what we have.”

What _Carpenter_ has is a battered copy of the Silt Verses, nearly as old as her, I’d bet.

She lets me borrow it, now and then — or, quite honestly, she doesn’t hide it well enough that she could stop me. I steal it away to my room every few nights and read from it while I pray.

The pages are worn: creased where corners have been folded down and marked where someone has circled passages in blue ink. It’s a fine thing, holding in your hands the proof of the people that came before you. I couldn’t even guess how many of the faithful have held this book before me, or how many might be lucky enough to hold it after.

I know my verses, though not as well as I ought to. Reading was never something I enjoyed as a child, not until my first copy of your sacred book was pressed into my hands. Even now, dedicated as I am to your worship, I find it more of a struggle than I ought. 

Maybe I’d have gone to school more if they taught us about gods like you.

Still, I am dutiful as ever as I learn your texts. If your worship has taught me anything, it’s that beauty means nothing without the struggle required to understand it.

I mark my own passages in the Silt Verses with a pen I stole from the motel desk: which lines speak most of your grace and your blessing, which words evoke and invoke you best. I jot my own interpretations in the margins, spelling out the truth as I see it.

Always, your voice is there, my Trawlerman, guiding my hand.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm [screechfoxes](screechfoxes.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, should anyone want to come and talk about the silt verses with me


End file.
